Hey! You Got Your DC Heroes in My Scribblenauts!

Universes collide when you combine hit Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts with heroes and villains from the DC Universe. Which is precisely what Scribblenauts creators 5th Cell are doing for the next game in their puzzle game franchise.

Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure drops Maxwell, the boy with the magic notepad that produces whatever he writes, smack-dab into the DC Universe. Maxwell must travel through the DC Universe to assist heroes, perform heroic feats, and generally save the day.

The game will include popular DC locations such as Themyscira, Metropolis, and Atlantis. Maxwell will also be able to summon objects relative to the universe, such as different characters’ vehicles, costumes, and weapons.

The game’s creative team, however, is having to attack the proverbial  ‘magic bullet’ problem head-on in this game. Earlier versions of Scribblenauts ended up having a few items that players would always default to for solving problems, like a black hole or a jetpack. In this game, 5th Cell is concerned about the possibility of everyone trying to solve problems with the same hero. Specifically, Superman. Especially since they’re putting 14 different versions of him in the game.

Executive producer Kirsten Gavoni has this to say about it:

Superman isn’t going to solve all your problems. He’ll be useful in certain areas … but he’s not necessarily going to do all of your bidding and deliveries and [creation of] different diversions for people. The puzzles are randomized enough that you’re going to need to use different types of objects in order to solve them.

This means that the game will generate diverse enough puzzles that Superman won’t be able to solve all of them. For instance, there may be a set of puzzles that will need a magic user to solve them, or Green Lantern’s power ring. There may also be situations where Superman can’t be used, like against a kryptonite-wielding Lex Luthor or a character with mind control.

Gavoni goes on to say:

We don’t want to limit people and say, ‘No, you used Superman too many times; you can’t use him again,’ but what we do do is, if you continually use the same creatures over and over again, or the same objects over and over again, you don’t get as many reputation points for doing so.

The reputation points system allows you to spend points in-game to unlock extra game features such as new weapons or costumes. Players will earn fewer reputation points for solving different puzzles with the same objects or heroes too many times in a row. So if you like to solve everything with Superman, you might want to take a break from him after a few puzzles and pull out a different character like Batgirl to solve a few puzzles.

Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure will be released September 24th, and is available for pre-order for both Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. The game will also be released on PC, but is not available for pre-order yet.